As Scott has already done a post today I’ll just drop a few links that I have sitting on my desk.

Amusing thread over at Digital Point showing peoples lifetime Adsense earnings.

Another site after your dollars as the million dollar home page, instead of buying pixels you buy words by the letter, simple but cool idea via Net Business Blog.

Adsense has a bit of a hiccup with reporting stats and the forum world panics like it’s the end of the world.

No game this week I’m afraid but if you’re after a bit of fun check out Gaj-It social Friday.

Phew, lot’s of emails and lot’s talking back and forth with business owners has taken a small step forward today with my second lease now signed and sealed.

I have a small furniture domain that I found for sale last year, I emailed the seller and he said he was open to offers, thankfully my first offer of £450 for it was accepted right away and it was added to the portfolio.

There are quite a few companies that specialise in specific types and styles of furniture and this domain was a type of wood, I sent out around 25 emails for this one to the top ranking sites and those using Adwords and had 2 interested companies within 2 days, this domain isn’t ranking yet so perhaps a bit early but I though worth trying.

As I am learning and speaking to people the details of the contract evolve so that everyone is happy, so the main changes I had to make and agree to were

• A 3 year lease on the domain name
• First refusal at renewal so they knew another company wouldn’t take it
• Maximum 50% increase in the lease fee at renewal

Those are pretty acceptable terms and I was happy to write them in, the lease fee I decided upon was £75 per month. That means for a domain that cost £450 I will get £900 in the first year and £2700 over 3 years while still owning it.

Why £75? I would usually intend to get the cost price of the domain back within the first 12 months, so started at a price I could negotiate down from if needed.

What’s next?
A bit early as most of my domains are not ranking, I had one agree to £250 per month on another furniture domain that was ranking top 10 but it’s lost it for now so put that on the back burner and I have another someone is considering for £100 per month. Just yesterday I did manage to buy

• ashfurniture
• redwoodfurniture
• cherryfurniture

All for £300+VAT and all .co.uk domains so they would be good candidates for this type of deal, on the whole I have found many quite responsive to the leasing option, I still got asked if I would sell and to give a price but sticking to my guns I prefer not to sell assets that I find too difficult to value, I’d rather lease for 3 years and see where the world is then and in the meantime build an income that is stable and create a business that is profitable and rich in assets.

Domain lease income : £575 per month

I’ve done a couple of posts highlighting the benefits of networking, especially in person. In this post I want to share a few ideas on finding networking opportunities.

• Attend trade shows and events related to your niche
  There are trade shows for just about everything, for me I visit Vegas each year for CES, various shows in London (Stuff Show, Ideal Home, various inventor events, etc).
• Attend expos related to your business model
  There are various expos for bloggers, affiliate marketeers, SEO, entrepeneurs and more. At these you’ll be able to learn from the speakers but even more from networking with other attendees.
• Contact other bloggers
  Many bloggers post about places they are due to visit, if you’re in the vicinity get in touch and see if they fancy a meetup, this is how I met Romanian super blogger Bobby Voicu, he got in touch with me when I said I was in London for the LG event.
• Local user groups
  Many towns and cities have usergroups for different interests, these often have a monthky physical meeting. One which I’m looking at joining is the Nottingham LUG (Linux User Group), ‘m not that familiar with Linux but as a number of my servers are running it I should be, so what better way to learn and get advice.
• Organise one your self
  If your blog/site has a decent audience or you’re an active forum poster you cpost the question and see who’s interested. I’ve done this a couple of times via Digital Point forums. ‘m still up for doing a Midlands one in the UK over the summer (if interested leave a comment).
• Press events
  Contact the press office of companies n your niche and ask to be sent any press releases. A lot of forward thinking companies throw events especially for bloggers, this is a cool way to meet the faces behind the products and other bloggers with the same interests as you.

This is the first blog post I’ve ever made whilst sitting the garden, so if you reckon I’ve missed anything please share in a comment.

The downturn in advertising revenue is no myth, while small individual publishers can never be sure whether they are just have a bad day, week or month some larger publishers are seeing the same and few are being hit as hard as parking portfolios.

Parked portfolios consist of large companies with thousands of domains parking the pages and relying on parking revenue income from direct type in traffic, companies like DBS Dark Blue Sea with the size of their portfolio can really give you a more measured look into the bigger picture.

DBS releases their financial profit guidance with it’s first quarter performance to March 31st
http://newsstore.smh.com.au/apps/previewDocument.ac?docID=GCA00839750DBS&f=pdf

The report is really quite interesting and well worth a read.

Read the rest of this entry »

With a daily readership of over 100,000 (RSS, email and web), Coolest Gadgets has far exceeded my expectations. CG has enabled me to quit my day job, travel worldwide and earn an income doing what I enjoy. Last year CG generated 6 figures, this year we’re on target to turnover ~$500K.

Coolest Gadgets has been running nearly 3 years. In that time we have gone from a one man blog to having a team of fantastic writers. Key elements for the success are:

• Persistence: It takes 6-12 months for a site to get going, in the early days it is hard to find motivation when you don’t have the traffic or income. Working hard then laid the foundations for future success, I remember sometimes not being in the mood to write but pushing myself to do so, I’m very pleased I did.
• Originality: the gadget niche is very crowded. We differentiated by writing about gadgets that hadn’t been covered elsewhere. This interested our readers and garnered links within our niche (helps SEO thus more new readers).
• Passion: being passionate about your subject makes it so much easier to blog (especially when you need that extra push), I kind of like gadgets
• Networking: Interacting with other bloggers and people in the industry is both fun and essential for building your blog.

There’s more I could write, but this contest has a word limit, if you want further info you can read the history of CG, I’ll also answer comments.

A free Wordpress theme has recently been released by Brian at Revolution who make really nice high end blog themes, this free one is available in 2 or 3 column layout.

MySpace.co.uk has been returned to it’s original owner with the original domain dispute being overturned.

Google announces VisualRank as it’s tool in precision image search.

Great article by Aaron Wall, What is a #1 ranking in Google worth.

Al’s running a simple competition with a cool prize.

It’s great doing what you enjoy, but will you make money out of it. Chris Guillebeau has asked a collection of blogging stars to find out.

All you need to know about running PPC campaigns .

Today’s game is Go Mad: The Escape, it starts to really get harder at level 5.

Today’s post was going to be about finding networking events to attend, however I got a call late Tuesday asking if I’d like to speak to Microsoft’s Search team about some new features they are rolling out into UK Live Search, so I thought it would be more timely to post about that. On the networking side of things I only got the call due to somebody I spoke to at a launch party a few weeks ago .

The conference call was meant to last 20 minutes but ending up stretching to 40 and I still only got chance to ask a couple of questions. One thing I found with all of the search team members they were exceedingly enthusiastic and committed to the product, Microsoft have been developing their search technologies for 4 years now and feel they are making inwards into the SE market.

There are various new features rolling, some are already available whilst others will be rolled out over the coming weeks
Read the rest of this entry »

Timing seems to be playing a large part in the success and failure of a lot of what I am trying just now, not just luck but it’s pretty apparent that with a bit of thought you can improve chances of success when selling and save money when buying.

As mentioned previously there is a huge industry that revolves around domains expiring and being caught, this is a double edged sword, on the one hand these people can catch domains and pay £5/$10 for a domain that they then want to sell for a huge mark-up which is fair enough. When you buy domains you are always going to be paying a huge multiple of what the owner bought it for and that really plays no part in its valuation, everyone has to make a living.

On the plus side there are quite a few people who make a full time living catching/buying & selling domain names. This means that near the end of the week or month you can grab a bargain, some domainers have to sell to raise money for their bills so staying alert and catching a bargain is all part of the fun. When bills have to be paid sometimes good domains can go for lower prices especially when the domain has just been caught - I have picked up a few freshly caught domains at remarkable prices.

Companies seem to be more receptive to sales nearer the end of the month when buying from them, for example domain dealers like BuyDomains.com seem easier to deal with nearer the end of the month with more chance of getting money off the asking price. Conversely when trying to sell something companies seem more receptive to discussions at the start of the month, perhaps this is all simply down to budgets and targets, which is fine - but if you have one stab at making contact with a company to make a purchase or sale make sure you think carefully and time it well, catching a company at the wrong time could hamper a deal worth thousands.

Something as simple as trying to contact a company with a nice unused generic domain name during their end of year audit can get you a quick no, a month later after they had passed the flurry of work that goes into wrapping up a years books may have led to a different answer.

I honestly think timing has had a much bigger impact in my successes and failures than I realise and it’s something I am giving more time and thought to when going about my business.

Last week I wrote about the benefits of networking in person, in today’s post I want to share the general format of press event for bloggers. The event I went to on Friday, was for the release of the new LG Secret mobile phone (read my review of the LG Secret).

The event was held in one of the suites at Mayfair Hotel in London, I was going to stay in the same hotel until finding the prices started at over $600 a night, so maybe not (though funnily enough at the place I did stay (Mayfair Millenium) I got upgraded to a $1,200 a night suite which wasn’t that special considering the price (which there is no way I’d ever of paid)).

The format the blogger event followed was pretty standard from my experience: Read the rest of this entry »

Khalid asked a question in the comments last week that I would like to cover today.

Can you please post how you actively find clients for your domains and what you say in your e-mails to them?

Firstly, to date I only have the one lease, it’s a big one at $1000 per month but I need to work hard to build on that and show it wasn’t a fluke. Finding clients is certainly hard, I have sent lots of emails and contacted lots of people with little response so it can be a bit disheartening, I am quite stubborn though and don’t mind persevering, the main ways I have used are just the obvious one’s

1/ The top 30 or so ranking websites if they are a business, just because they have an organic listing does not mean they would not be interested in another so always worth approaching them, especially if your domain ranks.

2/ Adwords – I contact the Adwords advertisers, they already see the value in the keyword and spend money on it so should be more responsive.

3/ Look for and purchase magazines dedicated to the niche, you can then find more potential clients who perhaps are stuck with print advertising and may not even have a website or email address.

For sending emails it really varies, if the domain does not rank then something short like this:

Good morning, I own {domain name} and am looking to lease the domain out which could be used as a second storefront for your business.

The domain is a prime generic term, lease would be £75 per month based on 2 years with an option to renew for a further year at the same price.

If you are interested or have any questions please get in touch

Regards
Scott Jones
Lease A Domain

If the domain ranks then I would bring in some recent stats for the last 30 days and include how much based on that traffic would have cost them and also mention the main keywords, so for example

Good morning, I own {website} which is {description}, I am however looking to lease the domain out, website can be included.

I am sure someone in the industry like yourself would be able to monetise this site and perhaps use it for their own sales & stock or you could charge for listings or use the traffic for your own related ventures, the site is almost 5 years old and ranks top 10 in Google UK for things like ‘main keyword’ and generates traffic from keywords like:

xxxxxx
xxxxxx
xxxxxx

Some basic stats on the site are:
Last months stats from Google Analytics

4459 visits
25,982 Page Views
5.83 Pages per visit

So if you don’t want to start a brand new site, suffer the sandbox and deliberate over SEO here is a chance to walk right into an old established website with traffic.

Lease would be for 2 years with an option to renew for a further year at the same monthly price.

Lease would be £xxx per month, taking the last months stats that works out at under £0.0xp per visitor for very targeted traffic with full control over the site.

If you are interested please get in touch.

Regards
Scott Jones
Lease A Domain

It’s been a tough sweat trying to convince people but I believe in what I am trying to achieve so will stick at it.

Also, how do you value how much a domain is worth per month? You recently spoke about Fuel Cell Boilers, what if you owned a domain relating to that, once it was ranked in the SERPs how would you value it because it is a new technology?

Future technology would not be the types of domains I would try and lease, certainly buy for the future but for leasing you really need to look at what is popular now so that potential clients can lease and expect to get a return, after all potential clients should be in a position to better monetise any traffic with actual product sales rather than you earning a few cents per click with Adsense.

For valuations again it depends on whether the domain ranks, if it does you may make money from Adsense/aff sales just now, if I was making £300 per month from a site I would look to lease it for £450 ish, I would prefer a stable income and one that is better than it performs just now. If it’s just a domain with little/no traffic so far I have been trying to get my purchase price back within 12 months.

I am pretty close to leasing out a small furniture domain that does not rank, it cost me £450 to buy it and the lease is for £75 per month which is £900 per year meaning after 6 months the domain has paid for itself and is generating some income. I also use Adwords data, if you generating traffic you can look up what advertisers pay per click and show value that way.

Finally, with regards to SEO, don’t domain ranks automatically drop when you change the content of the site completely? So you have a landing page for “BedroomFurniture.com” that sites 1st in Google then its leased and the lessee has a crap site with no SEO…how do you ensure your domain doesn’t lose its position because the lessee isn’t actually doing anything wrong?

Not in my opinion, the backlinks plus domain name plus age should keep a site there but if it’s weak then yes a complete change could harm the ranking a bit but I would expect it to recover, either way you are not selling a ranking, you are leasing a domain. You can make no guarantees as to the traffic or any present organic listing for which you have no control, I would always offer advice at the start/changeover anyway but once the lease comes into effect you have to step back.